Prime Minister David Cameron, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and the head of the civil service, the Cabinet Secretary Gus O’Donnell, launched the plans today.

The PM said:

Instead of bureaucratic accountability to the government machine, these Business Plans bring in a new system of democratic accountability - accountability to the people. So reform will be driven not by the short-term political calculations of the government, but by the consistent, long-term pressure of what people want and choose in their public services - and that is the horizon shift we need.

But more importantly the business plans will bring about a power shift by changing what government does. For a long time, government’s default position has been to solve problems by hoarding more power to the centre - passing laws, creating regulations, setting up taskforces. The result is that Britain is now one of the most centralised countries in the developed world.

We will be the first government in a generation to leave office with much less power in Whitehall than we started with. We are going to take power from government and hand it to people, families and communities - and how we will do that is set out right here in these business plans.

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